Latest / Pod Save the World / France Descends Into Chaos

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France Descends Into Chaos · Pod Save the World

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  Speaker 1: Terms and conditions may apply. Welcome back to Pod Save
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Ben, we are two weeks out from our midterm elections
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: here in the U.S. and about a week out from
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the Israeli elections, their first election since the October 7th attacks.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Feels like some pretty monumental political events in a tight
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: time frame there.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and great closing argument for Trump to endorse the
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: man who talked him into the war that has.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Driven up the price of gas.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: I'm sure that's really going to help those Republicans who
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: are trying to run away from the war in Iran.
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So for those who didn't see, over the weekend, Trump
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: officially endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, which should surprise
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: no one, you know, in practice. But in the past, U.S.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: presidents have not officially endorsed in Israeli elections because they
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: didn't want to be perceived as meddling. Trump doesn't give
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: a shit about that. In a Truth Social post, Trump
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: called Netanyahu, quote, a great warrior prime minister and an
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: even greater partner for peace in combating the Islamic Republic
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of Iran. Some real Orwellian language there, Ben. He also
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: called him strong, brave, and brilliant. Did you see Bibi
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: release like a response where he's sitting in front of
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: like a fighter jet? Very subtle.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: He's done multiple ones now.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: And my favorite is this is a man that is
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: kind of incapable of showing human emotion. And he's trying
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: really hard. He's like, my dear Donald, uh, I was
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: so moved by your endorsement. And it's just so slimy
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: and inauthentic.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And he's sitting like he's in an airplane hangar or something.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: He's like, here are the bombs we're about to drop
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: right after the election. Did you notice that J.D. Vance
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: specifically declined to endorse Netanyahu?
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, my favorite is he says he doesn't endorse in
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: foreign elections. Says the man who campaigned for Viktor Orban.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Went over to Germany, met with only the AFD. Yeah, yeah, no,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I don't endorse it.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't get involved in foreign elections.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, also Axios reported today, I believe, that
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: on Monday, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, had a
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: secret meeting with Netanyahu in Israel. So I hope everybody's
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: excited for the war to ramp back up right after
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the midterms.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Or maybe there'll be a little bombing before the Israeli election,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: just to give Netanyahu another little chef's kiss to the endorsement.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Well, so the question, Ben, is like, does the Trump
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: endorsement mean as much since, I think his approval rating
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: in Israel has dipped because a lot of Israelis are
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: mad at Trump because they feel like Trump.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Made Netanyahu stop the war in.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Lebanon and Iran.
• 4:11
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I think it probably helps.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, if Netanyahu's main argument is, I can get
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: the Americans to do what I want. It probably helps
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: on the margins, but also no surprise.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: I don't think anybody should be surprised.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Also right on cue, we saw today that the US
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: is sending the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the 13th Mew
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: to the Middle East, which is a lot of military.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: It's like 10,000 troops and a carrier strike group. They'll
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: probably swap out one of the other carriers and the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: boxer amphibious assault ship that's out there. But It also
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: feels like, you know, they're just reloading for whatever comes next.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: They're reloading for something coming next.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: And by the way, keep in mind when you see
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: the Biden-esque stories in Axios that Trump's really mad at
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu about something. He just endorsed the man. With like
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: a loving— He's not someone you can get any distance from.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: No. No, yeah. He endorsed the guy and then told
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: him in this filmed phone call that Bibi released that
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: he had written the endorsement statement himself, that it wasn't
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: his people. To your point about how you get all
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: these Republicans in the midterms, like trying to run away
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: from the war and run away from Netanyahu, the Institute
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: for Middle East Understanding provided us with some exclusive swing
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: state polling of some of these issues. Big deal. They
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: sampled over 3,200 voters in Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and Texas in late September, early October. The first question was,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: do you approve or disapprove of the vote to cut $ 3. 3
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: billion in taxpayer funding for the Israeli military out of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: this year's State Department budget? Georgia, 52% approved, 34% disapproved. Iowa,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: 59% approved. Maine, 57% approved. North Carolina, 48% approved. Ohio,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: 54% approved. Texas, 52% approved. So pretty unequivocal in swing
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: states where people are in this.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: Real far left politics there, you know, cutting off Israel.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Maybe in 10 years, the DC media will understand that
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: these are not far.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Left positions anymore. Big Iowa libs. They also asked, do
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: you think that the war against Iran generally benefits the U.S.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: or Israel more? Georgia voters said 50% Israel, 28% U.S.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Iowa said 54% Israel, 21% U.S. Maine was 59% Israel,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: 19% U.S. North Carolina was 52% Israel, 23% US, Ohio,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: 49% Israel, Texas, 51% Israel. So again, like voters have
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: been watching this war for the last, what is it,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: eight months now. They don't like it. They don't think
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: it's benefiting us. And they're pissed that it's benefiting Israel.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: And then Trump goes out in advance of the midterms
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and does this stupid endorsement.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the worst possible thing he could do politically
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  Speaker 3: to deal with that problem that's of his own creation.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, I just- I do want to dwell on
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: the fact that it's not just the 50-plus numbers.
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  Speaker 2: It's the 20%.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, that is— because, again, we've talked about this in
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: the past, but some of those people sit around mainlining
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Fox News all day that tells them that this war
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: saved us from nuclear Armageddon or something, and they're still
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: not buying it beyond the tune of 20%. That is
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: a shockingly low number.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Shockingly low, especially when you've got a lot of evangelical
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Christians who have a variety of reasons for supporting Israel.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: And have been fed a steady diet of Iran being
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: the boogeyman for decades now, too. It just shows you
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: how much the war and the reality of it has
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: kind of punctured all of the information loops that people
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: are in.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Also, listeners might have seen some social media traffic
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: over the weekend alleging that everyone's favorite corpulent dictator passed away.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Bond villain.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. However, North Korean state media released some photos today
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: of Kim Jong-un, which they say show that he is alive.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: We're going to put them up on screen here. Apparently,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: photos that are undated as far as we know of
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Kim Jong-un looking at children's shoes.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Was there an account that was like Kim Jong-un looking
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: at stuff?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Just staring into the middle distance.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: There he is with his daughter. It does confirm nothing, though.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: He needs to be holding the newspaper with the date
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: on it. So we'll see. I mean, you know, who
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: knows what is going on.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: They did seem to be like, even for internet rumors,
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: like remarkably thinly sourced.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like some random journalists or analysts in China.
• 8:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: This happens like every few years. Someone reports that Kim
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Jong-un is dead and it's usually wrong. And here we are.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Maybe Trump will give him an endorsement video.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: True social post.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Maybe you'll get one from Kim Jong-un.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be nice. We are going to talk about
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff today. We got to talk about
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the escalating war of words between Trump and President Volodymyr
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Zelensky of Ukraine. and kind of walk you guys through
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the very real ways that Trump has sided with Russia
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: officially in the actual war and how his actions are
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: getting civilians killed in Ukraine. We're going to talk about
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the French protests and how they turned violent over the weekend,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the possible political fallout, and how these movements seem to
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: be spreading across the European continent. Instead of Arab Spring, Ben,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: what do you think about Austerity Autumn?
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Ooh, I like that. Did you come up with that yourself?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I workshopped it beforehand. I thought about AngloSpring, but then
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I realized none of these people are speaking English.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I realized it was inaccurate in every possible way. It's
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: also not Spring. Then we're going to tell you about
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: a bumbling Saudi spy who was trying to steal information
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: from OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company. Then we're going to
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: just walk you guys through some incredible– internationally flavored tabloid
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: drama from the Trump administration. These stories have everything you want.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: There are foreign billionaires. There are the most corrupt business
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: interests imaginable in Venezuela and the Congo. We got grown
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: adults tattling to Donald Trump like he's their father. There's
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: allegations of theft. There's like another story with insane State
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Department email chains with all these people copied. And in
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So you're going to want to stick around for all
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: of that, I promise. And then, Ben, you did our
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: interview today.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I talked to a friend of the pod, Jasper Nathaniel,
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: who has the Infinite Jazz sub stack, and he's in
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: the West Bank now.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: He regularly reports from the West Bank.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: And, you know, listeners may have seen A few days ago,
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: there was a really brutal settler attack in the West
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Bank at the Olive Harvest there in which a 63-year-old
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: journalist for the Washington Post, Heidi Levine, was brutally assaulted
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: by a group of Israeli settlers. We kind of talked
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: about the systematic nature of settler violence in the West Bank,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: where the trend lines are with that settler violence, how
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Jasper himself thinks about the risks that he faces going
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: to these places, and what the perception is in the
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: West Bank from Palestinians and to some extent Israelis about
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: whether and how much the Israeli election result will matter. Like,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: will things be markedly different if Netanyahu loses and if
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: he wins? So it's a really great interview.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: As usual, Jasper. Shout out to Jasper for literally putting
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: his life and safety on the line.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Talking about putting your body on the line. Yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And, you know, like literally running over to rescue this
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: woman when she was beaten, stabbed. I think she broke
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: like four vertebrae.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Almost had a finger severed.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Like savage, savage beating. And then the fucking Israeli, like,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: government spokespeople essentially.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Like, cast doubt on her claim.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: They're, like, the alleged assaults on.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Like, it's on camera. She's in the hospital, you know,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It was disgusting and disgraceful and shocking. And, like, I think, like,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: 10 arrests have been made, but that is just not
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: even the tip of the iceberg.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do just want to say, because I've been
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: thinking about this ever since the interview, and you probably
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: have this feeling, Tommy, sometimes when.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: You talk to people like Jasper, but, you know.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: There are, there are people in our lives who, some
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: of whom we love, right.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Who just, they continue to believe that this isn't happening,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: you know, or, or that this is somehow very complicated.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Or there's both sides. Yeah.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: There's two sides.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: And then you talk to someone who's literally describing like
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: a state sponsored policy of terrorizing, killing and displacing people.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: And we're not even talking about Gaza. And, and, Every
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: now and then I have those conversations and I'm like,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: I don't really know what to say anymore to people
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: who are like, you know, I'm uncomfortable with people who
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: want to not give military aid to Israel. Anyway, I
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: just like listen to this account and think about whether
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: that's– think about whether this is complicated because this is
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: not complicated.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Right. It's hard not to read. Jasper's coverage or watch
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: those videos or see the way these people are being
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: treated and not feel radicalized by it. Yeah, yeah. And like,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: it's just so angry that, you know, these settlers are
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: acting with impunity. Like, they know that they can beat, maim,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: kill Palestinians and face absolutely no consequences.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Because they are part, as Jasper described them, like the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: tip of the spear of an Israeli effort to ethnically
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: cleanse the West Bank.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. It's clear as day.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: And thank God for journalists like that. I mean, that's
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: hard work and there's less people doing it.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's just scary as shit. All right. We're
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: going to start in Ukraine again, Ben, because that is
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: another policy that's going very South with this administration at
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the moment. And things have like, we talked about this
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: in depth last week, but things have gotten so much
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: worse in just like seven days that we wanted to
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: touch on it again. So just a quick reminder of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: what happened. So in early October, Trump announces this deal
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: with Putin to buy Russian diesel, Long story short, that
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: deal sent billions of dollars to the Russians that they're
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: going to use to fund the war effort. And then
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Trump also announced this quote-unquote energy ceasefire between the two sides.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: The Ukrainians had not agreed to it. They were surprised
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: by it. The Russians immediately broke it. And, you know,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Zelensky was not thrilled with any of this, so he
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: kind of popped off at Trump. It led to a
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: war of words between the two leaders that has basically
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: gotten relations between the U.S. and Ukraine in the worst
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: place since that Oval Office meeting we all remember in, what,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: February of 2025?
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: This clip will give you a sense of the kind
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: of tenor of the back and forth.
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: Let's watch.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Do you feel betrayed by what has been happening?
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: Really, yes.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Really, between us.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: Zelensky is not a good guy for us to deal with.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: than Putin. President Trump is facing pretty difficult midterm elections.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: Do you think you are being treated as a scapegoat
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: for his own problems?
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: This is my answer.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You want Zelensky out.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Have you forgotten that President Putin, he started the war?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I know the details, okay? And at
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: some point I'll release the details. If United States will
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: support Putin.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's unbelievable. It's tragedy. It's historic mistake and
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: big tragedy.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Zelensky doesn't know what he's talking about.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: Zelensky is a man that should have had this war
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: settled a long time ago.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: If he would have listened to me, he would have
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: made a much better deal a long time ago.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I think it's time for somebody else to negotiate on
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: behalf of Ukraine. OK, so the Trump administration, in addition
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: to those comments, has retaliated in a number of ways.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: This week, we learned that the Secretary of Defense Pete
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Hegseth is holding up a transfer of Patriot missile interceptors
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: to Ukraine. My understanding is that these missiles have been
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: paid for. They're coming from European stockpiles, not from U.S. stockpiles.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: But Pete just won't sign off on it, presumably just
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to be a dick. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Ukraine is just a handful of interceptor missiles left. And
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I think we talked last week about how the Russians
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: have this plan to just hammer Ukrainian cities and cut
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: off people from energy, heat, power, just make life unlivable.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: The administration has also throttled Ukraine's access to Starshield. That's
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the military version of Starlink satellite internet. It is paid
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: for by Germany. And what this means in practice is
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: that Ukraine cannot defend itself against Russian drones. That is
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: because Ukraine uses Starshield to control the drones that they
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: use to intercept and destroy the Russian drones that get
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: launched at Ukraine. But like starting in the middle of
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: last week, Ukrainian drone operators noticed that they were losing
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: connectivity at speeds over about 100 miles an hour, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: at times at speeds as low as 45 miles an hour,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: which means they can't control the drones if they want
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to catch up with and destroy even the oldest, slowest
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Russian drones, let alone the new rocket-powered versions. The Telegraph
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: reported that this was Elon Musk's idea. Reuters reported that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the order to throttle the drones, to throttle Starshield, came
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: from the White House. And then the Wall Street Journal
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: just now reported that Musk ultimately ordered the slowdown, but
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: that Trump and Musk discussed the issue directly maybe before
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: and after it happened. So we don't totally know, but
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: clearly like Musk and Trump's.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Hands are on the line. Yeah, exactly. They both have
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: their hands on the knife here.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian officials have also raised concern about the whether U.S.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: was cutting off intelligence about incoming Russian ballistic missile attacks.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I've talked to a couple experts who think like this
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: could just be like a really hard problem. Like when
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: there's bad weather and stuff, it's like it's hard to
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: figure out the trajectory or telemetry of an incoming ballistic missile.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So it could be technical problems, not benevolence. But we
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: also know that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff threatened to
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine in a meeting recently.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: So who knows? So, Ben, that's kind of like the
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: general state of things. Steve Witkoff is in Oslo today
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: meeting with Zelensky. I guess he's going to go to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Russia and offer a trilateral meeting with Putin, Zelensky and Trump.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, like that's some sort of a
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: gift to Putin.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Trump seems primarily focused on securing the release of an
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: American hostage named Stephen Hubbard. You'd think of you as
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: such good buddies with Putin. He just let him go.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Your thoughts on why this is all happening now, kind
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: of like the administration's response and then how Zelensky's handling it.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: First of all, we have to say, like, this is
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: a remarkable confluence of events where the United States is
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: taking Russia's side because these are actions that are being taken, right?
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: A diesel deal to replenish the Russian war machine. waiving
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: the sanctions passed by Congress so that Russia can have
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: more revenue, throttling the Starlink, like denying the Patriot batteries
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: that protect Ukrainian civilians. I mean, just one action after
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: another that is like in concert with Putin's war strategy.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Like it's in concert with what he's trying to do
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: in making these cities unlivable this winter. In terms of
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: the why now, I mean, we've talked a lot about
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: the underlying motivation of having more affinity for Putin, of
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: wanting to make money in these deals with Putin.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: I do think that.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: Trump does seem to be really determined to affix the
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: blame for the high energy prices to not just Ukraine
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: in the war generally, but Zelensky specifically.
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And like, who do you think is hearing that message?
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think anyone gives a shit.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: This is my point. It's... Nobody will believe that.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: As just a matter of politics, it just shows that
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: as Trump is more and more the man in the
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: high castle, his political instincts, which sometimes are very good
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: and sometimes are not, are now just weird because I
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: cannot imagine that there's like a swing voter who's like,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: you know what? I was going to pull the lever
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: for the Democrat, but Trump's right. It's Zelensky's fault that
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: the gas is too expensive. And now that he's punishing
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Zelensky and siding with Putin, I'm going to.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Vote for Republicans.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: So as a matter of politics, it's completely insane.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: But it does, I think what worries me about it,
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: beyond the fact that it is going to be devastating
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: to Ukrainians, it could tip the balance in the war.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: It is going to fuel the far right in Europe
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: as Europeans have to backfill all this money and refugees
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: might come into Europe. what it speaks to like a
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: psychology as we drift towards the later Trump.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Era, where all he's doing is like.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: Getting retribution on people he doesn't like or butting up
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: to the people he does.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: And so it's like part of what I'm seeing in
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Trump's comments that you saw there, he's wanted to do
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: this for a long time. Like he's wanted to just
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: side with Putin and he hates Zelensky because he thinks
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: he's like.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: A resistance liberal or something.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: And And there were enough restraining factors on him, you know,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: whether that's people around him, whether it's Republicans in Congress,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: whether it's public opinion. And now we're beginning to see
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: what it's like when he's just like, I don't care.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Like, I want to be on Putin's side. I want
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: to be in that trilateral meeting with Putin and Xi
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Jinping where I'm the strong man and Zelensky's his weakling.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: And that's frightening.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: As to Zelensky's response, like, sure, it's kind of like,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: Abdul Al-Sayed punching.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Back at Tommy.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: My guy.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Where you're like, I'm not sure that's the best politics,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: but I like what he said. In the sense that like, sure,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: probably not, doesn't really do anything to help Zelensky to
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: go on Piers Morgan and say he was betrayed. But
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: like the man is going through it and that's how
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: he feels. All I'll say is that maybe he has
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: to do that because he's going to need the Europeans
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: to backfill a lot of the support that.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: He was getting from the United States.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: The only tactical reason for him to be doing these
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: things is to kind of be making the case to
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: the Europeans like, these guys in Washington have really cut
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: us off now, left us high and dry, and we
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: really need you to step up, which is also going
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: to be a difficult political message for the Europeans to hear.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: So I don't know. I feel like Zelensky's in a
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: bit of an impossible position.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, at some point, like, civilians are getting— Bombed.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Children are dying.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Children have died this week.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And he has to explain to his people why it's happening.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And maybe like the downside risk, some people are probably
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: listening and thinking, well, what more could Trump possibly do?
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Until recently, the kind of intelligence sharing relationship between the U.S.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and Ukraine seemed like it was walled off and kind
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of untouched. That could very much change. But also you
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: mentioned like people that once restrained Trump. Lindsey Graham was
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah, yeah. As folks know, Lindsey Graham died.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the sanctions. bill that was passed in his honor.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Congress passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Act of 2026.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: No, dude, I'm with you. That's a weird memorial. Trump
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: signed it into law on the 18th of September. So
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the bill had like lots of sanctions and tariffs on
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: like Russian entities in the defense sector and banks and
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: shit like that that were kind of mandatory. It also
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: allowed really high tariffs on like Russian imports or on
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: countries that bought oil and gas from Russia, like up
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: to 100%. Last week, in a touching tribute to his
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: late best friend, Trump called the bill foolish, and then
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: he issued a waiver on all the mandatory parts.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: And then went to campaign for the guy's sister, I'm sure.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: So, like, yeah. And Trump's also reportedly, the Financial Times
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: reported that Trump is considering waiving sanctions on the Russian
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: shadow fleet.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Which they use like illicit activity. And you also mentioned
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: this trilateral meeting. Like, there's going to be possibly a
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: trilateral meeting between Trump and Xi and Putin at APEC.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Trump was asked about it. He bizarrely said like Russia
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: had been fined on Ukraine, which is crazy given the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: context of the civilian strikes. Besides Trump wanting this to
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: be like Yalta 2.0, it doesn't actually make sense to
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: me why you need the Chinese in a Ukraine meeting.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: They don't give a shit about Ukraine.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Other than the fact that they've been supporting the Russian
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: war machine.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Like they don't, this isn't their problem. It's like really
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the Europeans and the Russians that you would like actually
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: want in the room.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: It has nothing to do with ending the war.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is his wet dream is to be
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: in a meeting with, with, with, Xi Jinping and Putin,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: you know, he's fully ascended as an autocrat. He's at
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: like the big kids autocrat table.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Carving up the world.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're carving up the world and we're more powerful
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: than these weak Europeans over here. I do think, I mean,
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: just to advance this in a different direction, if the
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Democrats win control of Congress, it is an interesting question
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: of what they might try to do on Ukraine for
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: a couple of reasons. Because first of all, There are
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: people that oppose that sanctions bill because it gave such
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: extensive waiver authority to the president because.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: They anticipated this, right?
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: Now, listeners will know I'm not a huge sanctions guy
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: to begin with. But the question is whether Congress takes
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: some actions to try to protect the Ukrainians. Like, can
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: you legislate? some degree of intelligence. I mean, this is,
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: you know, these would be new terrain, right?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Remember when Congress passed a bill saying they got final
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: sign-off on any, like, diplomatic deal with Iran, for example,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: during the Obama years.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they did that.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: So they could pass a bill saying that Congress must
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: approve any Ukraine agreement, or they could, you know, mandate
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: certain types of assistance to the Ukrainians.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: They could mandate access to Starlink, right?
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: They obviously could Fortify that the United States can't leave NATO.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: And actually, the reason I think that this is interesting
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: and not just a thought exercise is I bet you
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: they'd get a ton of Republican votes.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I do too.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: So I think that unlike some other things.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: That Democrats might do where they are never going to
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: get a veto-proof majority, given Republican attitudes about Russia, you
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: could probably pass pretty overwhelming bills in support of Ukraine
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: that then force this kind of almost like probably a
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: constitutional standoff with Trump that, frankly— are both doing the
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: right thing as a matter of policy and morality, but
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: also politically humiliating to Trump. Cause you know, you can,
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: and you can begin to normalize Republicans breaking from him.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: So this hasn't got a lot of attention, but I
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: do think someone should be thinking through like, what is
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: the legislative agenda on Ukraine? If the Democrats, particularly if
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: they win both houses of Congress, cause they could really
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: they could have a say in this policy.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, I agree with that. I think Joe Biden probably
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: spent too much time focused on Ukraine and kind of
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: got the politics wrong.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, way too much time.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Because he was sending money over there. But I think
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: there's also- Well, he.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Would shout like, he's still strong.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: There's also an oversight opportunity here. The US policy towards
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Russia has become just offering them every incentive in the book, right?
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I'd love to see a series of hearings on this
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Lukoil deal we talked about last week where like, Kushner
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and Wyckoff are trying to steer billion-dollar energy assets like
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: oil fields in Cameroon to their benefactors in the Gulf,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: like literally like Emirati royals and other billionaire benefactors, and
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: then a big Trump donor named Todd Boley. That would
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: be a great thing to do oversight over. There's also reports, Ben,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: that the Trump administration was basically trying to encourage the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Europeans to resume oil and gas purchases from the Russians
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: and which I don't know if Marine Le Pen wins
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: in France. We're going to talk about that in a minute.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that will be on the table. But just
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: so folks know, the UN reported that 328 Ukrainian civilians
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: were killed in September alone. That is up 85% from
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the September of the year before. What is happening on
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the ground in Ukraine is horrific right now. It's going
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to get exponentially worse as we go into winter. Putin's
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: plan which was intercepted by, I assume, Ukrainian intelligence and
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: then given to Europeans and then given to the New
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: York Times and other outlets, is to cut off cities
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: from heat and electricity and create a humanitarian crisis to
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: freeze people, children, to death and maybe send them out
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: of the country. Like, that's fucking evil shit.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you make a really important, like, corrective to
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: what I said, which is that you've got to be
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: careful about this. You want to be seen to be
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: lowering prices, not just, you know, being about Ukraine. And again,
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: like I was making light, but Biden, I'm very glad
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: Biden stood by Ukraine.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: They did a lot of good things to do that.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: But what I was joking about is like politically, they
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: seem to think it would benefit them more than it did.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, for sure.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Now, here's the important addendum I would make, though.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: My plea to every Democrat, independent, and Republican Ukraine supporters,
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: one of the arguments you have to make, because I
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: think what the trap Biden fell into is it looked
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: like he wanted to continue the war.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: And it looked like Trump wanted to stop the war,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: and war is a bad thing, and we would like
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: to stop the war. This policy is going to extend
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: the war. Like, I think it is very important that
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: this be framed as Putin has no incentive whatsoever to
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: end this war. Putin, as the aggressor, is the one
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: that you need to pressure to end the war. If
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: you're pressing the lesser party fighting for its existential survival
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: and making it easier for Russia to bombard them, you
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: are going to extend this war.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: You are going to escalate this war.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: And so it's very important that this not just be
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: framed as like, we're here to help Ukrainians fight.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: It's that we're trying to end the war.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: And one way you end the war is you have
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: to have pressure on Russia or else they have no
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: incentive to make a deal. I saw Steve Witkoff meeting
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: with Zelensky today and I'm like, what the fuck are
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: they meeting about? Because Zelensky, let's say hypothetically, could agree
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: to every concession that Steve Witkoff is demanding to make.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: I still don't think Putin would sign off on that
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: because Putin wants to Go through with this plan of
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: like pummeling Ukraine and taking more territory. So that's how
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: you solve that problem is we're for ending the war.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: This is the way to do that, not just in
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: a more just manner, but in a manner that's going
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: to be more effective.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Also, if the diplomacy was just balanced and there was
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: some pressure put on, the Russians, there is a way
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to not end the war, but have some deal where
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you actually do have something like an energy ceasefire that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: can make life more tolerable for civilians over the next
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: year or so, right? But these guys just are utterly
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: incapable of doing that because they just want to get
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: paid by the Russian oligarchs or whatever going forward. And
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: by the way, thanks again to Andrew Weiss for geeking
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: out on this stuff with me earlier this week. This
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  Speaker 1: 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: That's squarespace.com slash world. Let's turn to France, Ben, because
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: over the weekend, there was a protest movement that started
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: peacefully and with students and just exploded this frenzy of
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: destruction and violence. The quick backstory is that the student-led
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: protest started in mid-September. It was high school kids in Paris.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: They came back to school. They find terrible conditions in
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: a classroom or in the schools generally. Some schools didn't have,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: you know, air conditioning or heat. There weren't enough teachers.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And so they started protesting. And the Macron government basically
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: ignored their actual concerns while ordering a pretty heavy-handed police
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: response that got violent. So the student protests grew. They
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: got more radical. The politicians got involved, especially the far left,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Then the public sector unions joined the protests.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And then over the weekend, there was this convergence of students,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: the unions, kind of the remnants of the yellow vest
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: protesters from back in the day. Good callback. Yeah, those
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: guys were fun. And then now there's like just people
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: in France who regularly show up to protests to smash
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: shit up and steal stuff. I don't know if they
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: are Black Bloc, Antifa guys. I don't know if they're
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: gang members. I don't know if they're just like soccer hooligans.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I was talking to someone today who was like, well,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: every time PSG wins, you know, they burn the city down.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: So it's not like exclusive to protest movements. But so
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: there's like 500,000, maybe 800,000 protesters out on the street.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: A lot of reports say they started peacefully. And then
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: by the evening, they got really ugly of those daytime
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: activity that was ugly too. An estimated 3000 businesses were looted. 2,500
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: people were arrested. A thousand French police officers were injured.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: And the police response writ large was totally inadequate. especially
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: outside of central Paris. And then, so since then, we've
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: seen this massive blame game. Like the government is blaming
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the far left for their rhetoric. They're saying the far
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: left party's inside of the riding. The far left and
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the protesters blame the government for not listening to the protesters,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: for the police response, and just being heavy-handed. And then
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Marine Le Pen and the far right, they are blaming
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the government and they're blaming immigrants. And they're basically saying,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: we are the serious ones. We are the ones who
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: care about law and order. Give us a shot. governing.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: And I think that message is breaking through in a
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: big way. At the moment, there's curfews in place. The
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: government has promised to crack down hard on the people
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: that broke the law. But there's another protest planned for
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: next weekend. French unions have called for a general strike
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: on November 5th. So there's no guarantee any of this
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: is over. And then, Ben, the French presidential election is
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: in April of next year. Most political analysts, everyone I
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: talked to today about this, said the What just happened
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: this weekend is helping Marine Le Pen in the short term.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Who knows if it'll help her long term, but it's
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: helping her right now. And these protests are converging with
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: the possibility of a debt crisis in France and a
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: huge fight over the budget, which has to be passed
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: by the end of the year. And everyone's kind of
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: like has positions that are hardened because of the election.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: So it's just like it is a very, very scary,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: bad setup right now for the French.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, this is such a multidimensional story because a few
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: observations beyond what you said.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Number one, the shortages.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: And cost of living issues that have been exacerbated by
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: the war in Iran are much worse in places like
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: France because they get more of their energy from the
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Middle East and they already are suffering the cutoff of
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: Russian oil and gas into Europe. So it's a snapshot
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: into like, you think it's bad here, it's worse there.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: The fiscal thing is just a bomb because- There are
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: all these cuts that they're making to social services, including education,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: and they're just deep into debt. And unlike us, the
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: dollar is not the reserve currency, so they can't just
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: like print money indefinitely. And so they don't have good
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: answers to these questions that people are raising and protesting about.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: I will say that this could also be a taste
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: of what's to come in democracies around the world as
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: AI comes online. Like I was kind of watching this– And,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: you know, there was kind of a bit of a
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: snarky thing on Twitter of, like, why don't we protest
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: like the French or something, you know?
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you want the far right to win elections
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: in America? Then we should protest like the French.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: But the reality, though, is I actually think that, like,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: there's going to be more of this because if AI
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: is as disruptive as it seems like it might be
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: and suddenly you have mass job losses on top of
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: cost of living, on top of oligarchs getting all this money, like,
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: we could be living— in kind of a new normal
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: where you start to see a lot more of this
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: kind of direct action by people. And we should be
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: very clear, the vast majority of people protesting are peaceful.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: This is like a very effective student movement that then
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: joined with the labor movement.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: And yeah, then you get these hooligans.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: And I want to say another thing about that, which is,
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: you know, the JD Vance of the world and the
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Fox News is somehow this is tied to immigration. First
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: of all, not only is that just like not, based
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: in any facts, like this has started with the cost
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: of living protest. Do you know anything about French history?
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Like they, this happens periodically in France. They did this
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: in 1968. They've had like, I don't know how many
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: revolutions they've had over the years, like students at the barricades.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: I shit, I just took my kids to see Les Mis,
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: you know, like this is not abnormal there.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: So that's a bunch of bullshit, too.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: There's like a saying in France, like the real opposition
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: takes place in the streets. Like they have a revolutionary streak.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: J.D.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Vance, stop making everything about your thing.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Every generation has some revolution in France of some sort. Now,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: like the main event, though, is the politics into next year.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: And right now the narrative battle is being kind of
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: won by the– because the government is siding with kind
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: of the Le Pen narrative.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: That these are far-left agitators.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, very much so.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Which, by the way, like, I don't know that they're
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: far-left agitators.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Like, talk about something— I have some thoughts on that, yes.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Like, we just don't know. That may be true, but
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: it might not be true.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: Like, just because the left wing has supported the protesters
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that these people that we see looting have
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: anything to do with, like, Mélenchon, the left-wing politician in France.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: I just don't know that.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: And it's pretty irresponsible of the government to just go
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: all in with this one narrative that is empowering of
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: the far right.
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: So earlier today, I spoke with a woman named Catherine Fieske,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: who is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Institute. She's
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: based in Paris. She also specializes in like populist political
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: movements and authoritarian politics. And she made a bunch of
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: really important observations that I just wanted to share. So
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the first is like the initial student demands were totally reasonable.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey. It's literally 100 degrees outside. We're in
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: a classroom with no air conditioning for the next month.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: That is not a situation where I can like stay
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: awake and study and do what I need to do.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: And they were just totally ignored. And it's another example
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: of Macron's government ignoring domestic politics generally. Like, I don't
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: know if you saw this, Ben, but like the violence
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: happened Saturday. Macron gives a speech on Sunday. On Monday,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: he jets off to Kuwait. to cut an energy deal,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: which like, okay, in fairness in the French system, the
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: president does foreign policy, the prime minister and the education minister,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: like they're going to take care of the school stuff.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: But like he's, you know, kind of labeled himself this
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: all powerful guy for the last 10 years. You can't
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: just fuck off when things get bad. And also in
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: the French, education system when you're a senior or whatever
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: they call a senior over there um you take these
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: exams your senior year and they're like wildly determinative for
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the future of your life like if you don't do
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: well on these exams you won't get into university you're
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: just kind of like locked out of a bunch of
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: stuff so when these kids are like hey like i
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: don't have a professor at my school because of budget
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: cuts it's a really big deal for them in in
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: their lives and then you know to your point about
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: like the french history of protests like uh she was
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: telling me that Catherine was telling me that, yes, like
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: there's this history of these French protests even getting violent.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: But what was remarkable about this one was the speed.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: The delta from like high school kids peaceful protest to
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: this over the weekend was like three weeks. And with
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: yellow vests, it was like 18 months to get that wild.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: And everyone is blaming the far left. And there's also, though,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: like clearly some amplification from far right parties connected to
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the Kremlin.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: That were repeating kind of Kremlin talking points about how like, look,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: this is the French Republic crumbling under the weight of
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: all these migrants. Democracy is going to fail, right? Like
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: it's just very much worth watching all of that amplification
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and the role it may or may not have played
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: and the weather like not, I don't think Marine Le
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Pen was like sending far right people out on the
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: streets to crack heads necessarily.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: We have no evidence of that either.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: But people like associated with her might've been. And then finally,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: it's just like, I think the arguments that we're hearing
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: here from Vance and others that are like fundamentally racist
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: about migrants will gain some currency in France. Because when
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: you see photos of a lot of the protesters, they
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: are clearly like non-white people.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Some of them, yeah.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Enough of them are that are being highlighted in ways
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: that are being demagogued. But she was just saying like
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the problem is not immigration in France. It's integration of
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: recent immigrants because you've got like second and third generation immigrants.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: you know, African, you know, the kids of kids of
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: African immigrants who have no opportunity and like are just
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: living in very poor neighborhoods who feel like they have
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: no future. And some of the looting we saw, like, yeah,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: like a Rolex store got hit up, but also people
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: were stealing like bath soap and like, like basic essentials.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? This was not like, you know,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: like just high-end stores.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's, it is, it's, this is why it's important
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: in this world where you get kind of fed these
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: media narratives. Like I talked to my friend, Sarah Durow,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: who's a, an activist in France and, you know, was
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: really involved back in when they had to push back
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: against the far right winning the National Assembly. And what
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: she was saying is that what you had is this
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: convergence of grievance, right? Because when the high school, the
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: budget cuts that were hitting the schools are also hitting.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Other parts of the social safety net.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: And everybody is saying, after years of austerity, like you
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: keep taking from us to like, pay for other things, right?
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: And I think part of what happened here is that
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: there's so much pent up grievance in French society that
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: the protests just scaled exponentially, you know, beyond what anybody
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: who is organizing those protests could do. And when you
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: have like just exponential millions of people turning out on
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: the street, that's when you get, you know, either agitators
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: who just want to loot or people that might have
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: a political agenda you also have like, when you watch
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: the images and this is, you know, we have this
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: in our country now too, but like the French police, like, yeah, I'm,
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: they're in a difficult position, but they, they, they look like,
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: you know, they're in these black, you know, militarized, like
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: it is a dark confrontation that is happening when you
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: have this kind of militarized force that is like basically
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: trying to tell kids to shut up, you know? Um,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: And that's why I just think that there's such a
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: combustible mix in our politics, not just in France, but
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: like it's kind of, you know, it could tip here.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: It really could.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Like I was watching this and thinking, we're not like
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: the French, like we don't do our politics in the
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: streets the same way. But we've got a bumpy ride
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: coming for the next couple of years. And what if
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: you introduce like a financial crisis here to that?
• 43:59
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: We actually have a voice note from your friend Sarah
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that we wanted to play. Let's listen.
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: Now the battle is over the narrative. The government and
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: the far right are really focused entirely on the violence.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: Marine Le Pen has blamed the radical left. Éric Zemmour
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: has framed this in terms of like hatred of France
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: and colonial resentment. And the left is really struggling to
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: shift that narrative, especially because the media environment has really
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: shifted to the right. So the risk is that it's
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: massive and really joyful movement because it is bringing people
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: together around education and public service and economic justice really
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: gets reduced to a security crisis. And so I think
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: it's important to understand that, um, This is a really
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: big moment in France, and it's probably going to be
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: a very big moment in Europe. And hopefully the progressive
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: force are going to be able to center this demand
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: for equality.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: On that point of the narrative, though, a lot of
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: people pointed out to me that I talked to today
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: that Marine Le Pen's speech seemed more presidential than anything.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: She's sitting in her office being serious. And then again,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: he pissed off to Kuwait or whatever. There was.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Again, the French, when they protest, they often, you know,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: there's the scariest kind of burn it down images. But
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: there's always just like a few videos or images that
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: come out of these things that are just incredible. Like
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: there was this, I don't know if you saw the
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: images or the video of the couple just kind of
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: like drinking and smoking in a cafe.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Stuff's getting destroyed around.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: I do love the film.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: My French brother-in-law sent me a video of these two
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: dudes working in a food truck and they're just making
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: sandwiches as people are just ripping it up all around them, whatever,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: ripping heaters. And then there was this one clip that
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: we just wanted to play for you guys of a
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: protester that was just cinematic, to say the least.
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Where does a piano come from? I don't know. That's
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: the best part. That's the best part. That someone thought to, like.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: So for those listening and not watching, that was a
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: protester in the middle of a terrifying sea of protests
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: getting blasted in the face by some sort of fire
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: or something.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: Water cannon.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Like, the world is, like, burning around him and then
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden a piano just floats forward. So
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: obviously someone added, like, super cute music to that. I do.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: One story.
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: I was in France shortly after the some of the
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: worst yellow vest rioting.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: And I had to do a meeting.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: I was trying to raise money for the Obama Foundation, right?
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: OPC doesn't pay for itself.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: And I won't name the destination, but in the place
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: where I was meeting, the entire window of the building
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: had been shattered. So like picture a giant plate glass
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: window on the Champs-Élysées that is just like in a
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: million pieces. And I walk in for the meeting and
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: we have the meeting and nobody mentions this.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Like nobody says this.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: It's just like going about their business, you know?
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: Um, but yeah, I, I, I, this narrative point is
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: so important though, because I do just worry.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: It is, there is this reflexive thing here too, right?
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: Like when, when we can blame the far left for things,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: it's like, that's like the media goes to that, like,
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: you know, gravity. Um, And meanwhile, the far left or
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: the left or whatever you want to call it is
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: usually the people trying to raise questions about like cost
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: of living.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: And it's a way to never deal with those issues.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: It's like it's much simpler.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: To reduce this to a law enforcement question than to
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: be like, why is this society so fucking pent up
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: with rage that this is happening? It's easier to be like, no, no,
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: like the far left is bad and we must, you know,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: have law enforcement.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: And that's why, like, I think it was like a
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: few French people kind of half making jokes, but then
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the kind of like, why don't we protest like the
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: French do narrative when the results were this amount of
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: violence was stupid because then the entire conversation becomes about
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: the theft and the looting and the violence and not
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: about the underlying issues. And that is how we lose
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: political debates, not win them. Um, also France is not
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: the only country like dealing with major protest movements right now. There's, uh,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: there are protests that turned violent in Milan, Italy over
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the weekend. Um, We talked about the protests around housing
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: in Spain. Now there's like tent encampments. Workers have called
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: for a general strike in Spain. There's ongoing protests in Albania.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Some of them started because of Jared Kushner and his
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: stupid wife trying to buy an island. So this is
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: one we're watching. Some big elections coming up. Thank you
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: again to Catherine Fieske for talking with me about this
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: stuff and to Giovanna DiMaio from Carnegie and then Georgina
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Wright from the German Marshall Fund. I'll just geek that
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: with me on the phone today in very fun ways.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Speaking of events that are going to burn it all down, Ben,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: CrookedCon is just over two weeks away. Join us in Washington, D.C.,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: November 5th through the 7th. We're going to reflect on
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: the midterm results. We're going to look ahead to what's
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: next in 2028 through hours and hours of great programming
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and hopefully celebration. I'm knocking on all the wood I
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: can find here about the results. We just added some
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: big names to the lineup. J.B. Pritzker is going to
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: be there. Senator Chris Murphy is going to be there
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: representing Robert Garcia, Representative Ilhan Omar, Representative Sarah Jacobs. We've
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: got Heather McGee, Jessica Tarlov, many, many more. We announced
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: some other names previously. Ben and I are going to
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: do a Pod Save the World session. Check out the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: full lineup and get tickets right now at crookedcon.com. Get
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a front row seat to the discussions that will shape
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: the future of our pro-democracy movement, crookedcon.com. Pod Save the
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: World is brought to you by HIMSS. If you're not
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• 51:57
  Speaker 1: slash world. Use our link so they know we sent you. Ben,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: let's talk about artificial intelligence and the spies who love it.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: So there was a 35-year-old man named Abdul Rahman Alfazan
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: who was caught placing bugs in a conference room at
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: the OpenAI office. And prosecutors say he did so on
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: behalf of Saudi Arabia. So this guy had lived in
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: the U.S. for 15 years. He had been a permanent
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: legal resident since 2020. He was a month away from
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: his interview to get U.S. citizenship. He had worked at
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: a handful of big tech companies in the U.S. before
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: getting hired at OpenAI in 2025. And it seems like
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: he probably should have stuck with the tech-only track because
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: he was a terrible spy. This Bozo stuck a small
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: circuit board-looking thing with a microphone in it into a
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: USB port in the back of a TV. And then
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: his plan to hide it was to wrap it in
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: toilet paper. Have you seen the photos of it?
• 52:55
  Speaker 6: It's crazy.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: It's so obviously there. The toilet paper makes it worse
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: because the TV's all black and then there's the white
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: toilet paper. And then he also had another... listening device
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: in a bag that he left unattended in a conference room.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: And the bag also had his wallet and ID in it.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: I think he had to go get it at the
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: loss and found. So OpenAI, they obviously have some sort
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: of counterintelligence team. They found the device. They called the FBI.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: They set up cameras. They busted this guy checking on it.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: This dude also did a bunch of pre-spying research with chatbots.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: those conversations are now being used against him.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: A lesson to all- Hey, chat GPT, how can I
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: bug Sam Altman's office?
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Dude, he asked a chatbot under his wife's name stuff like,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: how do you build a recording device and maintain it?
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: So his links to the Saudis include, he once said
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: on a podcast that he visits Saudi Arabia three to
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: four times a year. And I think he said that MBS,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told him to work
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: at top tech companies. The prosecutors have messages between him
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: and a member of the Saudi royal family who was
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: texting him things like, Saudi needs you more than the U.S.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: I think he wrote back 100. About 36 hours after
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: he was arrested, his wife and son left on a
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: one-way flight to Doha, paid for by a Saudi military official.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Not at all suspicious. And then I guess the judge
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: presiding over the case said that the Saudi consulate offered
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: to pay his bail and basically said it was a
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: blank check offer. In the sense of set whatever bail
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: you want, we'll pay it for it.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: And so they obviously didn't, but that's, you know, even
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: more suspicious. So I guess it's unclear whether this guy
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: was spying for like Saudi intelligence or maybe this could
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: have been some kind of like commercial espionage thing. Maybe
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: they're the same in Saudi Arabia.
• 54:37
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: I would explain why he was so bad at it
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: if it was like a commercial thing. But Ben, you
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: got to think that OpenAI, Anthropic, they're filled to the
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: gills with the real spies.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: This is the point.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: And this is why I really want to talk about
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: this because I've been talking to kind of goons, you know,
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: security type people for two or three years about this
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: very question, which is that the culture of these tech
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: companies like OpenAI and like.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: But goons was our loving term for like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: It's an endearing term.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Mouth breathers and goons were like the people we really liked.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: But the reality is like they have been hiring people
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: like crazy for a couple of years because they're growing exponentially.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: They often hire foreigners, which, again, I'm not averse to
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: that at all.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: But they don't really do screening, right? Do you see.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: The stories about the North Korean IT workers who are
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: getting hired left and right? Yeah, yeah.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: It's like, you know, and so the reality is this
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: guy may be Keystone Cops, but I guarantee you that
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: the Chinese spies are good.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: And I just, you know, I deeply believe that as.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: OpenAI and Anthropic have been hiring like hundreds or thousands
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: of people, like at breakneck pace, many of whom are
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: not American, this is much more common than these companies
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: want to admit to themselves. And that there's, and some
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: of it is just commercial espionage, you know, Chinese or
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: other people just trying to steal secrets to build their
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: own AI.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Some of it may be.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: There are obviously sensitive systems that we've seen, obviously, these
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: companies involved with the U.S.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: Military. This is like one of those tip-of-the-iceberg.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: Moments where the Saudis are not known for having the
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: best– remember how effectively they covered their tracks.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: In the Jamal Khashoggi killing? These are not the best
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: spies in the world.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: But there are other countries, including China and Russia, that
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: have– incredible intelligence services. And also, frankly, and this is,
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: I want to bend over backwards to say I'm not impugning,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: there should be Chinese and Chinese American and Russian American
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: engineers at these places. Like, that's good. You do just
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: want screening. You know, you just want just all your employees,
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: like whatever.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: Ethnicity they are.
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: And I just don't think that they have really been
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: doing that. And again, it speaks to, in normal times, frankly,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: AI would be developed in a national lab. Because why
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: do you have an existentially risky technology in private hands?
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: One of the many reasons for that is this. I mean,
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: it's not even the most important reason. The most important
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: reason is that I don't think a profit motive should
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: drive the development of a technology that could end human existence.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: But one other reason that these places like would normally
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: be national labs is that you would screen employees.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah and it just it's also part of why like
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the we need to beat china stuff just like makes
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: me roll my eyes a little bit because like nobody
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: buys that we can beat them but then they're they're
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: not they're distilling our.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: They'll just they'll distill the models we release and they'll
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: steal the technology yeah they do with everything else everyone's
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: going to catch up with everyone else it's um An
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: amazing story, though.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: It was a fun one to read. Okay, speaking of fun.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Not as fun as this one, though.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Not as fun as this one. So we've come to
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: the part of the show that is just pure tabloid fun.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: So Michael on our team wants to call these segments
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: As the World Burns, which I think is a pretty
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: good pitch. It's pretty good. If you like soap operas.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Last week, we talked about Kim Guilfoyle. She was the former,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: now former, U.S. ambassador to Greece who was like, hey,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: pay my MX bill. It's 100 grand. This week, we're
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: going to tell you about the battle royale between longtime
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: friend of the show, and sentient Twitter troll Rick Grinnell
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: versus Trump lawyer Alina Haba. So Haba, you might remember,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: was briefly installed as the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: I believe it was ruled unconstitutional what they did. But anyway,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: so a couple years back, Rick Grinnell, in the first term,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: he was like, what, deputy? Or no, he's like acting
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: director of national intelligence.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: And ambassador to Germany.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Ambassador to Germany, yes. In the second term, he made
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: a play to be secretary of state. Lost badly. He
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: ended up being an envoy to Venezuela for a bit.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: Then Rubio sent his ass packing. to run the Kennedy Center,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: and then seemingly he got fired from that job too.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Alina Haba recently married, she's a Trump lawyer, she was
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: the US attorney for a bit. Now she, like the
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: latest headlines about her big wedding, she married some dude
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: named Turhan Mildon. He is either 25 or 29. We
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: don't know. He claims to be a billionaire. He's from Turkey,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: but he somehow managed to get close to top officials
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: in Venezuela and where he's in the cement business, Ben.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: I know, that's the best part.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: It sounds so mobbed up. Also the shrimp production and
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: export business. Okay, fucking Forrest Gump over there. He's also
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: an advisor to the president of Congo, and he has
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: mining interests in the DRC. So you can already tell
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: this guy's on the up and up. He also has
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: a track record, we just have to say, of dating
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: or marrying women with access to power. His first wife
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: had connections to Erdogan, in Turkey. Then he got involved
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: with the daughter of a prominent Venezuelan admiral. Now he's
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: with Alina Haba, who's in the Trump orbit. And that
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: relationship helped him because Delcy Rodriguez, the interim president of Venezuela,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: had canceled his cement contract because he was close to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: the old Maduro kind of inner circle. But then she
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: realized that he was engaged to Haba and kind of
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: walked it back. She didn't want to piss off Trump.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: So Grinnell, Rick Grinnell and Mildon knew each other because
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: they both did work down in Venezuela. And remember, I
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: think Rick Grinnell was sort of on the side of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: let's have a rapprochement with the Venezuelans. Let's try to
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: like restore relations. Whereas Rubio was like, nah, I'm going to,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: you know, send in the Delta force and take them out. Right.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: And Grinnell lost that argument. So the story goes earlier
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: this month, Habba storms into the Oval Office. She tells
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: Trump that Grinnell swindled her husband out of millions of dollars.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: She said that he'd solicited a donation from Milton for
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: the Kennedy Center. The donation never made it to the institution.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: But Grinnell apparently in the story said, lump your Kennedy
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Center donation into the same check as this other business
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: payment for a grand total of $ 17. 6 million. We'll divide
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: it up and route everything to the right place. But
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: here's where the story gets weirder. Habba kept getting the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: amounts wrong to Trump. Initially, she said Grinnell stole like
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: $ 17 million. That was revised down to $ 5. 6 because the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: rest went to some Congo software deal with this Texas
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: defense company. Grinnell denied all of this. So then Milden's
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: team shared texts supposedly from Rick Grinnell telling him, quote,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: once the money comes to the company here, I will
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: arrange the donation to the Kennedy Center and you'll be
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: joining the VIP events and get close to with the administration,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: even with POTUS. He also allegedly said, quote, we need
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: to make you the American face down in Venezuela. Grinnell
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: says the messages can't be from him because the Kennedy
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: Center is spelled C-E-N-T-R-E the British way. Either way, Ben.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: The money never made it to the Kennedy Center. I
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: don't think we really know where the money is. Every
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: piece of this story gets weirder as we go. Your thoughts,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: favorite parts here?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: I was thinking- What are we reading between the lines? Yeah, no,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: I was thinking what I could say about this.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: And first of all, the only thing I was looking
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: at over here, Tommy, is I was curious what a
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: sentient Twitter troll Rick Grinnell's up to these days as
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: his story swirls. I'm curious that he's been in Michigan
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: for the last couple of days, like campaigning against Abdelaziz.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: His last tweet three minutes ago is, Muslims against Michigan's
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: Abdullah Syed.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: I like it.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: What?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: He's trying to probably stay in Trump's good graces.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, okay.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: Going after our buddy Abdul. But here's the thing.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: Like, when I was in government, when we were in government,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: you become acquainted with the fact, and you.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Don't need to be in government to become acquainted with it,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: but it happened for.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: Me, that there is this whole, like, underworld of, like,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: the most corrupt people places on earth, you know, and
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: the most corrupt industries on earth. And it's basically like
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: mining interests in places like the DRC. It's governments like
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: Venezuela's that have just started ideological but became just, you know,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: nests of corruption. It's private mercenaries like, you know, Eric Prince,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: we've talked about.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: It's the Balkans.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: It's like Serbia, you know, and like this kind of
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: weird like mafioso kind of corruption there. It's, you know,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: corners of the crypto industry, of course. That's a world
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: in which there are like billions of dollars to just
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: kind of slosh around these fixers and marriages and mafias
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that. And what is so amazing about
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: this Trump grift that we're living through is it's literally
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: like the U.S.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: Government is now like a party to that.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: Like to the most corrupt, I mean, Venezuela, a DRC mine,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: like Turkish sons-in-law, you know, like there's all the, like
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: this is, it touches, I keep waiting for some connection
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: back to like, you know, 1MDB in Malaysia or something,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: you know, like this is just like this circular movement
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: you know, like arteries of corruption in the global economy
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: that like the most powerful people in the United States
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: are just now like diving headfirst into them, you know?
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: And every time I see one of these stories, I'm like,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: this is what we know about, you know? Like these
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: are the ones that are just like coming to our attention. Like,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: can you imagine like how much of this there is?
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, because it also suggested the Kennedy Center, R.E.,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: piece of this is kind of interesting too because like
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: rick grinnell was ostensibly in charge of the kennedy center
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: while he was also like a venezuelan envoy you know
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: the kennedy center is like almost like a money laundering
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: front right you know in this story right the kennedy
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: center like how crazy is that.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: And alita haba runs into the oval office to tell
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: daddy that rick grinnell stole money from her billionaire husband
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: and then it turns out that it was like routed
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: to him from like her husband's like blood diamond producing boss. Like,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: you know, like even, even the best version of this guy, like,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: first of all, it all sounds like a front for
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: some other industry, whether it's drugs or like, I don't,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Like, but, Let's say you are like.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: The cement industry is usually a front for something. I've
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: seen enough mob movies to know that.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Let's say you were just actually in like the tungsten
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: and cobalt mining business in the TRC. Like, you're probably
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: cutting deals with the M23 for security.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: I can't believe Eric Prince is not in this story.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: He must be in this story somewhere.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: You're exploiting some of the poorest people in the world
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: working in the most dangerous conditions imaginable. The whole thing
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: is insane. And who is this guy... This, like, Lothario
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: running around the world, like, romancing his way into these positions.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was wondering, like, what his game is that
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: he just kind of finds one female mark after another,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: you know?
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: Have you seen his photo? He kind of looks like Assad. Yeah,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: he's not like.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: He's fine. Yeah, he's not like our buddy Jasper.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: You know? No, he's got, like, a little stache going.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: The other thing about the Oval Office meeting that's so
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: funny to me is that she's not mad at.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: about the corruption, right? It's more like, he broke the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: rules of the grift, you know?
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: It's like, there's supposed to be these kind of agreed upon,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: everybody gets rich things and, you know.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: He stole my blood diamond money.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: He stole my share of the corruption. You know, like,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: that is, Trump is like a mob boss who has.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: Like, one, you know, underling come to him and be like,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: This other mob underling is not playing by the code anymore.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: That's what's going on. That's how far we've sunk here.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: It is so weird. One more kind of as the
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: world burns episode for you guys. So listeners might remember
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: the name Paolo Zampoli. He's a Trump crony from way
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: back in the day, like kind of 54 clubs in
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: New York. He was a modeling agent. He takes credit
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: for introducing Donald to Melania. Trump made him the special
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: envoy for global partnerships, which I don't really know what
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: that does. Apparently, it's supposed to be about cultural stuff.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Zampoli decided that meant.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: I think we set that up.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: Did we?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: I think it was like a Cairo speech initiative. That's
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: the best part about it.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 7: What?
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: It was like, so you could like develop like public
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: private partnerships to support like good things in the Middle East.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: You know, like Trump is taking all these things.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: You're responsible for this.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: I might personally be responsible. That's perfect.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: Okay. So Ben birthed Paolo Zampoli. Zampoli gets the job.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: He decides it means that he just runs around the
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: world and does whatever the fuck he wants. And like,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Forces like Azerbaijan to buy a bunch of Boeing jets
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: or whatever.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly what we intended.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Be what you go for. However, his job ended after
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Politico published a piece about Paolo's long running email war
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: of words with his boss, the deputy secretary of state,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Christopher Landau. Landau sent emails like this, quote, immediately stop
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: all work on any issues not directly tied to cultural diplomacy,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: including every one of the issues you mentioned in your
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: recent emails. And apparently that email cc'd like 16 people.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: So Politico said Zampolli's, the remit was cultural stuff, but
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: he went way beyond it, including, quote, meeting the energy
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: minister of Romania, working on nuclear issues in Hungary, attending
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: World Bank IMF meetings, and meeting with the UAE director
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: of foreign direct investment, and even discussing with an Argentine
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: official how to send that country's astronauts to space. So
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Landau warned, so according to this report, Landau even warned
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the Serbian foreign minister not to work with this guy
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: outside of like the cultural remit with Zampolli. Zampolli apparently
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: accused Landau of talking with the New York Times for
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: a story that folks might remember that was about how
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: Zampolli used his administration connections to get ICE involved. to
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: detain and eventually deport his ex-partner, the mother of his child.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: So that's the character of this man. Landau told Zampolli
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: to stop sending, quote, unhinged emails until I receive further
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: directions from the White House on how to proceed. The
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: best part of all this was Politico got a hold
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: of these emails and then called Zampolli, who went on
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: the record in interviews twice and just fucking unloaded on
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: his boss both times. And at one point said, the
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: only person that could give me this job and can
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: terminate me is the president of America. And then a
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: few hours after publication, he was gone.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: Again, like how many people like this guy, though, have
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: like kind of wormed their way onto the Titanic here?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: And it is always funny, Tommy, when there's, I don't
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: know this Landau guy.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: I don't either.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: But occasionally, like even in the second Trump administration, there's
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: like some normie that is in there. He's probably like
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: a Heritage Foundation guy.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know anything about him.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: But don't you love... I'm looking him up right now.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: But don't you love imagining this? The guy's the deputy
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: secretary of state. This is the most important job he's
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: ever had in his life. And some fucking modeling scout
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: who did coke with the boss in the 80s is
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: calling to fuck off with 13 other people's CC. And
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: he like can't get this together. He can't ride this guy.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: On like a FOIA-able email account. The extent to which
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: these people don't care about being caught. They paper everything.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: They put everything in text. Government email, like the most vulnerable...
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: like communication imaginable, he's putting it in. It does remind me,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: like I did have like one or two occasions when
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: I was in government where like I caught a whiff
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: of something that was like relatively corrupt.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: And my strategy aided by.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: Our former boss, Tom Donilon, who was like, remarkably and
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: effectively paranoid, was to email like 700 people in the government.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: Like every lawyer could think of me like, this happened
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: and I have nothing to, you know, like.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Memorializing this one.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: Just memorializing this one. And that one was a file. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: Now, Paolo, on the other hand, is like performing the
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: corruption on the government email.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: It's like the opposite tack.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: So this guy, it sounds like he was Harvard, Harvard,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: clerk for Clarence Thomas, then for Scalia, partner at Kirkland
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: and Ellis. Later, Quinn Emanuel argued nine cases for the
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: I think this is a really funny thing about the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: second Trump term is I totally disagree with this guy
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: probably about every single thing. But I'm sure he like
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: earnestly went into government to just like pursue his radical
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: right wing agenda. And he's found himself just in a
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: sea of grift, you know, like surrounded by people like this.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: But he's got Javier Millay calling me like, this guy, Zampoli,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: is telling me how to launch a space rocket. By
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: the way, I'm just kidding about him, Zampoli, doing cocaine
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: with the boss in the 80s. I don't know that
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: any of them did any drugs.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on in Studio 54. I mean, Trump,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: we'd be better.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: I have this theory of Trump that we'd be better
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: off if he actually like drank and he wouldn't have
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: all this repressed whatever.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: He'd probably sleep more. Yeah. Anyway, love these stories. I
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: do feel like something happened around the Guilfoyle story where
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: just like there was a cascade of more of this
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff just started coming out. Like people went
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: public with these things.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: Wait till Democrats have oversight powers. I mean, I can't wait. Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: Use them early. Use them often. All right. We're going
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: to take a quick break. When we come back, you're
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: going to hear Ben's interview with Jasper Nathaniel about his
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: reporting from the West Bank. It is harrowing stuff. You
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: will not want to miss it. So please stick around
• 1:11:52
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• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, joining us today from the West Bank is Jasper Nathaniel,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: who is an independent journalist who's done a lot of
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: reporting on Palestine and the West Bank. He's there to
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: cover the Olive Harvest scandal You can find his writing
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: at the absolute must subscribe Infinite Jazz. And I'm just
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: going to say up here, Jasper, like not only is
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: this essential reading, but you depend upon subscribers to do
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: the kind of journalism you do, which not enough media
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: outlets do. So everybody should check out Infinite Jazz on Substack. Jasper,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: thanks for being with us.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks for having me, Ben.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: I just want to start, obviously, with.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: What happened last Friday in a village in the West Bank.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: An American journalist for The Washington Post, Heidi Levine, was
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: violently attacked.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: She was left with.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: Four broken vertebrae, two broken ribs, needed surgery on her
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: finger that was nearly detached. All of this, a consequence
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: of violence from Israeli settlers, terrorists, really, that day. So
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: just to situate our listeners and viewers, you were there.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: You played a critical role in helping to get to
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: her and making sure that she survived.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: Can you describe exactly what happened?
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 7: So, you know, it's olive harvest season here in the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 7: West Bank. And traditionally, this is a celebratory time of year.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 7: The olive harvest is it's a family affair. Kids, moms, dads, cousins, friends,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 7: they all go out. There's picnics. They, you know, spend
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 7: weeks sometimes picking their trees. And then it's, you know,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 7: it's also their livelihood. They send the olive straight to
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 7: the local olive press, and they make it into olive oil,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 7: and then a lot of that olive oil ends up
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 7: in the States or wherever. I mean, for a long time,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 7: but intensifying in the last couple of years, Israeli settlers
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 7: in the West Bank have used the olive harvest as
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 7: an opportunity to terrorize Palestinians. I think in part because
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 7: they're all sort of out at once, and so it's
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 7: like shooting fish in a barrel to them in some ways.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 7: And also because, you know, they steal the olives and
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 7: then they make their own olive oil.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 6: So they are quite literally robbing them.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 7: And also because, you know, they, you know, first settlers and, and,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 7: you know, many in Israel don't even like accept that
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 7: Palestinians exist. And so like they are robbing them of
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 7: their culture and their history too. So on Friday, It
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 7: was the olive harvest for a village called Abu Fala,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 7: which is east of Ramallah. And in the morning before
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 7: getting there, there was an attack in the town right
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 7: next door, Termasaya. Termasaya is the village where exactly a
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 7: year ago, I filmed another really bad settler attack where
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 7: a Palestinian grandmother was clubbed nearly to death by a settler.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 6: So this is the town right next door.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 7: Now, Abu Fara, like Tirmasiyah, has a settler outpost that
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 7: is basically directly adjacent to the village. So in this case,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 7: in Abu Fara, the outpost is on top of a
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 7: hill overlooking the olive fields, overlooking the village. And an outpost,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 7: just as a reminder to your listeners, is a settlement
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 7: that is not even authorized by Israel. So settlers have
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 7: just gone out and decided, we live here now. A
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 7: lot of the times they're taking over Palestinian structures and
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 7: moving into them. And this outpost is here not because
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 7: it's got a nice lawn or something like that. This
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 7: is a strategic plot of land that Israel is trying
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 7: to claim in order to separate two Palestinian villages and
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 7: to build roads to connect two settlements. And so the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 7: point is, where these outposts are and where the violence
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 7: takes place, there's nothing random about it at all. This
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 7: is all part of a methodical plan that is being
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 7: put together at the highest levels of the Israeli government
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 7: and military. A lot of those same people who now
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 7: come out and condemn Israel settler violence when it gets
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 7: too hot or, you know, orchestrating the, the, um, the
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 7: sort of strategic plan that requires this.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 6: Sort of violence to sustain itself.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 7: And so we get to the olive harvest that morning
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 7: and we literally, you know, the, the, there's no families out,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 7: it's all just men and they're racing to pick their
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 7: olives as fast as they possibly can. So it's, you know,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 7: like I said, it is, this is nothing like what
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 7: it's supposed to be. Um, the reason people are moving
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 7: so fast is because we are literally watching on top
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 7: of the hill. Dozens and dozens of settlers preparing to attack.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 7: I mean, and I mean that in the most literal sense.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 7: We're watching them put their masks on their faces, pick
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 7: up their clubs. They're sort of milling around, like talking.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 7: They're looking with binoculars. I mean, it's so clear that
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 7: they're going to attack. And by the way, this olive harvest,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 7: the village council of Abu Farah coordinated it with the IDF.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: So that they would.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 7: Provide protection for it, protection on their own land from
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 7: the settlers who the IDF refuses to get off of
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 7: their land. So the IDF actually agreed, you can go
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 7: out to your olive fields to stay and we will
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 7: protect you. The IDF didn't show up, not until later
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 7: at least. So about an hour into the olive harvest,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 7: the settlers start charging down the hill. There's probably 50
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 7: of them. And we can see that many of them
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 7: are carrying these really big clubs and they have these
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 7: slings that, you know, they're able to fire rocks, like
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 7: hundreds of feet, really big rocks. And they start doing that.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 7: They start setting the olive fields on fire. So the
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 7: air is getting smoky and the farmers are now like
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 7: frantically trying to pack up their equipment and, tie up
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 7: their olives into sacks and get away. But what you
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 7: have to realize is that the olive field is the
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 7: buffer between the settlers and the settler outpost on one
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 7: side and the actual village of Abu Fara on the other,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 7: as in the residential core where all the families live
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 7: and where the whole community is there right now. And
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 7: so if the settlers are able to get past the
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 7: alba fields, they're now in the village and they are
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 7: with no doubt going to start burning homes and assaulting people.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 7: And they're basically trying to expand the boundaries of their outpost.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 7: And so the reason I mentioned that is because as
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 7: the settlers are charging down the hill, the other thing
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 7: that's happening is dozens of young Palestinian men and boys,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 7: even the Shabab in Arabic, emerge and put masks on
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 7: their faces and and pick up rocks and prepare to
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 7: confront these settlers who are coming down to attack the village.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 7: You know, to these young men and boys, it's not
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 7: just about protecting the olive harvest or themselves.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 6: It's existential.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 7: I mean, this is to protect the community. And so
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 7: these young men basically charge out. And for the next
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 7: 10 to 15 minutes, there is a truly like a
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 7: pitched battle in the olive fields with the settlers, you know,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 7: firing rocks and, um, And, you know, like I said,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 7: they're setting all the fields on fire.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 6: So it's smoky.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 7: And the Palestinians are basically successfully pushing them back. And
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 7: the settlers are starting to retreat. And then what changes
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 7: is that as this is happening, a white truck with
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 7: settlers comes speeding down the hill. And there's two or
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 7: three men in the back holding assault rifles. And they
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 7: start firing the assault rifles. And at that point, everybody dies.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 7: on the Palestinian side just turns around and runs, myself included.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 7: And then as we're running, suddenly there's tear gas in
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 7: the air as well. So that means that either the
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 7: military or the Israeli border police are there.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: They are now tear.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 7: Gassing the Palestinians who are trying to protect their own
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 7: land as they're running away. And while this is happening,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 7: I turn around and I see in the distance a
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 7: Somebody who I can see is wearing a journalist vest,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 7: basically being just savagely beaten by five or six settlers.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: Did you know she was there that day? Had you
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: seen her before?
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 6: And I didn't.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 7: Know about her. I mean, lots and lots of people did,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 7: you know, if she's a real veteran. But I had
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 7: never met her before and I had not seen her
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 7: that morning.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 6: So I just knew there was a journalist out there.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 7: I thought it was, I mean, there were a lot
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 7: of Palestinian journalists out that day and I mean, this
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 7: is a horrible thing to say, but based on how
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 7: savagely they were beating her, I was thinking it's probably
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 7: a Palestinian because, you know, they reserve the worst violence
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 7: for Palestinians. And, you know, they have these huge clubs
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 7: and they're just like, you know, smashing her over and over.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 7: They're robbing her. They're picking her up and then throwing
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 7: her back down, kicking her. I mean, it was just
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 7: so heinous as this is happening. You know, we're all
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 7: shouting and, you know, people, the Palestinians there, myself, a
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 7: couple other journalists are seeing it and saying, we have
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 7: to rescue this person, basically, because they're going to die.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 7: I mean, it seemed like this person was going to
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 7: be murdered right in front of us. But there was
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 7: really no way to get there because at this point,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 7: there are so many settlers. I mean, in the video,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 7: you can see they have fanned out across the olive fields.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 7: There's tear gas in the air. There's smoke in the air.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 7: They're still throwing rocks. And so it was basically going
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 7: to be impossible to get to her. until once again,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 7: these young Palestinian men charge out in front and start
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 7: throwing rocks at settlers who now at this point we
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 7: know are armed with machine guns. We also know there
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 7: are soldiers there who will happily shoot a Palestinian kid
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 7: with a rock. So these young Palestinians now are risking
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 7: their lives to go out and rescue some sort of
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 7: unknown journalist who at that point we didn't even know
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 7: who it was. As the Palestinians are making that push,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 7: settlers start to retreat again and that's when i was
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 7: able to run out in front and grab her and
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 7: i mean i was just like so shocked at seeing
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 7: a 63 year old you know jewish woman who reminded
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 7: me of like somebody who could be in my extended
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 7: family um and you know just like putting together the
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 7: what i just saw done to her with then seeing
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 7: her was just i mean It was terrifying. But, you know,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 7: I helped her up and started pulling her back.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 6: She was in agony.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 7: She kept saying, let me die and let me die.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 7: Like she wanted to just, I mean, she really was
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 7: in so much pain. And as I'm starting to bring
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 7: her back, the settlers make another charge. And so this
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 7: is the point where in the video, I'm now shouting
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 7: to run and, you know, she's in so much pain.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 7: I'm basically like dragging her along. And just at the
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 7: moment when I'm starting to think, We're going to get
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 7: overtaken by the settlers. Like, I'm going to be at
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 7: the bottom of one of these piles now with this journalist.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 7: The young Palestinians step out once again. They literally form
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 7: a perimeter around us and beat the settlers back with
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 7: rocks once again. And that is how we were able
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 7: to get Heidi to the back where the Palestinian Red
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 7: Crescent was waiting for her to put her in an
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 7: ambulance and take her away. And then the last thing
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 7: I'll just mention is that 30 minutes after this has happened,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 7: The army is there, and they're just hanging around. The
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 7: settlers are still there. We are yelling at them. We're
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 7: saying these settlers just almost killed somebody. There's video, and
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 7: they're all still wearing their masks and holding their clubs,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 7: and the soldiers just don't seem to mind. About 30
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 7: minutes later, they drive into the village, get out of
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 7: the Jeeps, and just fire into a crowd of Palestinians,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 7: shoot a 54-year-old man in the thigh with an exploding bullet,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 7: shatter his femur. and then block paramedics from reaching him,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 7: aim their guns at the paramedics.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 6: And that was a typical Friday in the West Bank.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm going to come back to a couple
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: pieces of the story, but like I, you know, you
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: have had some arguments I've noticed online where you've made
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: this point that Palestinians should have the right to defend themselves.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: And And people act like, you know, you're a terrorist
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: But you've just described like state-sponsored violence aimed at the
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: absolute destruction of Palestinian communities and identity. And I've just
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: asked people to consider if somebody was charging you in
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: masks and trying to burn your livelihood and destroy your
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: villages and shoot your family members, you would probably want
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: a right to defend yourself, right?
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, what's the.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 6: Alternative, right? The alternative is you lay down and die.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 6: I mean, literally.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: And if they didn't do that, Heidi would be dead, right?
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 7: That's what the next thing I was going to say.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 7: And by the way, Heidi, who I have talked to recently,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 7: says the same thing. She says, if those Palestinians hadn't
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 7: come and started throwing rocks, I probably would not have survived.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 7: And so again, like, this is not controversial. I mean,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 7: if those Palestinians did not pick up rocks, and charge
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 7: after the settlers, Heidi Levine would probably be dead. If
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 7: they were not doing that during settler attacks all across
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 7: the West Bank, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 7: that is happening right now would be happening at five
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 7: times the clip because it is the only line of defense.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 7: And yet, still, despite these just plain facts, soldiers are
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 7: routinely shooting kids because they pick up a rock You
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 7: can do three to 20 years in prison in Israel.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 7: You know, this is one of Ben-Gabir's torture dungeons, basically. And,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 7: you know, the point I'm trying to make is that,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 7: you know, this question of like Palestinians' right to defend themselves,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 7: it's just so intuitive. I mean, this story, what happened
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 7: with Heidi, like there's just, there's no other answer to it.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 6: Like, of course they had to pick up rocks. They
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 6: literally had no choice.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 7: And I am frustrated, frankly, that that is not just
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 7: like conventional wisdom among any politician or anybody who claims
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 7: to care about humanity. I mean, the question should be,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 7: do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves and through
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 7: armed struggle, if that's what it takes? And if not,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 7: do you suggest they lay down and die and let
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 7: their village get overrun and let Heidi Levine get killed
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 7: and accept the fate that the settlers have in mind
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 7: for them, which they will openly tell you is to
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 7: wipe them off the map?
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu's statement, the prime minister's office statement after this incident,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: you know, as usual, something that does happen to Palestinians
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: on a regular basis happens to a Western or happens
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: to an American, happens to a Jewish American. So there's
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: obviously more international outcry. Netanyahu's response was to kind of
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: suggest that the facts remained in question and to say
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: that they'll do an investigation.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: You know, the Washington Post has demanded investigation.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: But I mean, we've seen how Israeli investigations tend to go.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: They almost never result in anything.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: What is your sense of where the accountability is going
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: to come from, if at all?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 7: Last year, when there was a similar incident in Termasaya,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 7: the one I documented, it was not an American who
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 7: was beaten, but it was an old woman.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 6: And it caused enough.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 7: Outrage that Israel had to kick into gear and act
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 7: like they were doing something about it. And in fairness
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 7: to the police there, they arrested the guy who clubbed her.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 7: And I am told, I was just told that he's
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 7: still in custody awaiting trial, that he's in jail right now.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 7: I don't, I can't prove that that's true, but that's
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 7: what I was told. However, that is like, you knocked
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 7: off a pawn from the chessboard. There are still, you know,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 7: you still got the whole board right there. to arrest
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 7: one or two or three or four of these guys
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 7: with masks clubbing people is ignoring the fact that these
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 7: people are part of a well-connected, well-resourced network of violent
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 7: settler outposts that are the tip of the spear, backed
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 7: by the IDF, the tip of the spear for the
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 7: state-backed project of ethnic cleansing. And so in this case,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 7: I mean, Israel announced that it made a handful of
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 7: arrests the other day. They're sort of weirdly like combining
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 7: what happened with Heidi Levine with the diplomats being attacked
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 7: in Tibet and just saying like, we arrested 10 people
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 7: in those two cases. And like, you know, on settler Twitter,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 7: they're saying they just like nabbed a bunch of random
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 7: settlers and are going to do like show trials and
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 7: then let them go. I don't know if that's true.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 7: But my point is like the outcome here is going
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 7: to range from absolutely nothing happening to arresting a few people,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 7: and maybe they'll do a little jail time. But in
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 7: either one of those scenarios, anywhere on that spectrum, the
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 7: outpost network that is backed by the state and the
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 7: military remains, and nothing has been done to slow the
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 7: violence against Palestinians except take out a couple out of
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 7: thousands of, you know, the foot soldiers that are part
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 7: of this.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: You mentioned also that this group of European diplomats from
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: France and Belgium and Poland were assaulted in an incident
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: the following day. And again, pretty horrifying video of that, too.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 3: You've been reporting on these incidents in the West Bank
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: for the last two, three years.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: I'm curious, are these attacks becoming more frequent?
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: Are they becoming more brazen in the sense that, you know,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: obviously this happens to Palestinians all the time, but now
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: it doesn't matter if it's, I mean, attacking diplomats, I mean,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: and journalists is the ultimate kind of impunity.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: Is that representative of the status quo? Is that an uptick?
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: I was kind of wondering is, the fact of the
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: Israeli election, which is in a few days, is that
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: mainly maybe even giving them more cover because, because, uh,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: you know, Israeli society kind of moves in a harder
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: line direction before an election.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: What's your sense of that dynamic?
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 7: I mean, I think all these things are at play, right?
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 7: So like, uh, for starters, settler violence has been on
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 7: an uptick for three years, um, for more than three years,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 7: actually since early 2023. Um, and, um, uh, you know,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 7: the election certainly like the feeling is that the settlers
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 7: are sort of racing against the clock because they think
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 7: that if Nanyahu loses, then there might be a little
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 7: more pressure put on them to, to stop, you know, the, the, um,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 7: to stop what they're doing.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 6: And so the racing against the clock, most people don't
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 6: even think that's true.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 7: Like if Eisencoat wins, they will probably get a little
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 7: bit less support, but unlikely that anything's going to be
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 7: done to actually slow them down. But, um, I mean, look,
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 7: like the violence is completely out of control, obviously. The
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 7: thing about the Taibet story that's a little funny to
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 7: me is like, I want to know who planned this trip.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 7: Because if you go to the part of Taibet that
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 7: they went, you're getting attacked by settlers 10 times out
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 7: of 10. Like this place, first of all, there's Palestinians
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 7: living there. Of course, it's a Palestinian community. But like
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 7: you are walking into the lion's den. Like you're going
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 7: to get attacked by settlers. To be clear, that's obscene.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 7: The IDF in an hour could get these settlers out.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 7: You know, they could take down their outposts and arrest
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 7: the people. They know who are running these places. They
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 7: know the entire network. I mean, we're talking about Israeli
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 7: intelligence here, but they allow these people to stay there
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 7: because ultimately what they want is that land. They want
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 7: to chase the Bedouins in Tibet off the land. So
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 7: like the people who are, you know, calling it a
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 7: false flag or saying this or that. It's like, I
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 7: challenge any one of these people to go to this place.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 7: And if you are not, you know, clearly a settler or,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 7: you know, openly showing your support to them, you're going
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 7: to get attacked.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 6: And that's the case all over the West Bank.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 7: In Abu Fala, if you step into the owl fields,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 7: you're getting attacked. In Termasaya, if you cross the This
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 7: house on the edge of the town, you're getting attacked.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 7: Literally yesterday, an American home was burned in Termesia. An
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 7: American got his skull crushed yesterday. His head is split
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 7: wide open. Four Americans in six days have been severely
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 7: injured by settler attacks. I mean, it's just everywhere you go.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 7: I mean, I've been in the olive fields literally every
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 7: single day for the last two weeks or so, and
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 7: there has not been one day where there has not
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 7: been an incident with settlers.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: How do you take precautions about your own safety? Like,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: how do you factor that into your reporting process?
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 7: Well, I'm I'm now wearing a helmet, which I should
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 7: have been doing for a long time.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 6: But I mean, listen, like you have to sort of
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 6: use your instincts.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 7: Right. I mean, when you see guns, you just like
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 7: you have to leave. You know, there's no there's no
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 7: competing with a gun.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 6: Especially a rifle.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 7: If the settlers are making a real charge, you turn
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 7: around and run the other way. But I do consider
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 7: it to be my job to be right at the
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 7: front capturing what's happening. And I'm pretty fast. I've run
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 7: from settlers many, many, many times before. I've had physical
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 7: confrontations before. And so I'm on some level having to
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 7: just trust that I will be able to get away.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 7: But I am largely using my instincts and when things
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 7: seem to be getting bad, like they were the other
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 7: day in Abu Falah, you just turn around and run basically.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 6: And I want to say that, like, I actually, I don't,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 6: I don't.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 7: Want to speculate on like what Heidi, you know, what
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 7: was going on in her mind, but the fact that
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 7: she was where she was as in like in the
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 7: middle of this battle, you know, at her age, when
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 7: the people attacking are, you know, teenagers and 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds. Like,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 7: I have to think that she didn't think they would
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 7: attack a journalist. She thought the old rule still applied,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 7: where if you have a press vest and a press helmet,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 7: you're not going to get attacked. And of course, those
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 7: rules do not apply in the West Bank.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: And how are Palestinians in these villages and these places
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: that you're covering? Are they just completely cynical about the
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: possibility that Israeli policy could change after the Israeli election
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: if somehow Netanyahu loses? What do they want from the
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: rest of the world? Like, what is the mindset these
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: days for a Palestinian?
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 6: You know, I think it's like twofold.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 7: There's a, there's definitely, I mean, first of all, Palestinians
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 7: are all over the map on their politics, of course. Like,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 7: I know people who are, you know, supporting every party
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 7: under the sun in Palestine. I know anarchists, I know communists,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 7: I know, you know, conservatives. I think, like, I'll talk
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 7: about the sort of vulnerable communities, the ones that are
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 7: really on the front lines of the settler violence and
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 7: the state violence. I mean, the feeling is that nothing
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 7: is going to save them, but the terror against them
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 7: could accelerate at a slower pace, if that makes sense.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 7: So right now things are getting worse and worse and
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 7: worse and worse and worse because the settlers are getting
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 7: more guns. They're getting more power. They're building more outposts.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 7: There's more of them. They're recruiting people. By the way,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 7: they're recruiting kids off the street in Israel, orphans basically,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 7: training them into being little child soldiers. If the government changes,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 7: if Eisenhower comes in, this guy supports the settlers. He's
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 7: made very clear he supports the outpost movement, the farm movement.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 7: But if Ben-Gabir and Smotrich are out, there will probably
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 7: be less money going to the settlers, less weapons going
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 7: to the settlers. And so the intensity of the speed
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 7: at which the situation for Palestinians is getting worse, will
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 7: slow down a little bit. And that, you know, like,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 7: especially parents with children, like, are desperate for any sort
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 7: of relief at all. And so I don't want to, like, downplay.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 7: People are, like, this election is very top of mind
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 7: for everybody, and people are hoping for a certain outcome
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 7: just so that their lives get, you know, marginally less bad.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 7: But I have not met one Palestinian who thinks that, like,
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 7: this new government is going to actually, like, be a
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 7: step towards, you know, granting them.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, unfortunately, a truly harrowing and accurate picture.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 3: Jasper, Ken, thank you enough for the reporting you're doing
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: and for coming on to share that with us. Again,
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: it's InfiniteJazz, J-A-Z dot com. People should definitely follow and subscribe.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks a lot, Ben. Appreciate it.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: Thank you to Jasper and Nathaniel for joining the show,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: and we will talk to you guys next week. Pod
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our show
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: with the Writers Guild of America East.